Time travel and re-writing history are a theme this week.
1. La’an Way or Another
The episode opens in a way that many have so far this season, and other recent Trek shows and movies have done: diving into the day to day routine of one of our main character crew members. This time we get a montage of La’an’s daily responsibilities when major security crises aren’t endangering the ship. Work logs, noise complaints, stolen contraband are all just a sliver of the mundanity that she deals with and while she can clearly handle it with her tough demeanor and hard outer shell, it is putting a toll on her mind. This paired with her nearly constant frustrations and identity issues (self hatred may be too harsh a term) are starting to make her inner turmoil come to a head.
Because she is so gruff and inner facing all of the time, it has been somewhat difficult to fully connect with her character up to this point. And while I like this tough woman who is who she is due to many bleak circumstances coming together, it would be nice to crack that shell just a little bit. And that is a big part of this episode.
2. ANOTHER Alternate Kirk?
During her work day a man dressed in an early 20th century suit comes stumbling out of a portal in the ship’s hallway. I had been hoping he was a member of Aegis, like Gary Seven [see “Assignment: Earth], but he’s apparently one of those Federation time cops who shows up around “Deep Space Nine.” He’s been shot and is clearly dying, but not before handing La’an some sort of device, asking her to complete his mission, and to get to the bridge. Upon his death, his body disappears as some sort of energy wave washes over everything. Making her way to the bridge, she finds that she is no longer on her Enterprise and is, in fact, in an entirely new timeline. Things are similar, but different where they count the most. James Kirk is the captain and there is no Federation or Starfleet. They are part of the United Earth Fleet and things have played out very differently since the late 21st century than they should have. This is where I started to become, for the first time in its existence, where I became a little tired and annoyed with Strange New Worlds. Because of time travel and plot devices we are thankfully only in this alternate universe for a short time before Kirk and La’An are sent back to 21st century Toronto, but how many times can we get thrown into a slightly alternate timeline? How many alternate Kirks are we going to get so that Paul Wesley can play him a little differently each time and doesn’t feel cornered into doing a Shatner pastiche? By the end of the episode it makes enough sense why we got this other version for this adventure, but after this point we either need Kirk Prime or none at all.
3. Terrorists and Aliens
As La’an and Kirk make their way through Toronto trying to blend in, make some fast cash, and figure out what key event is going to be the one that changes the timeline, a terrorist attack destroys a brand new bridge (the one the time cop was actually referring to before his death) that would have united the planet. They remember that this is an event that was always meant to happen, which does add to the fun adventure of it all. Modern Trek has become a place that shows the destruction of a large building or structure quite often, but something like this typically always works. Between the scale of it and story implications it will also always get us thinking about our own real life terrorist attacks. Whether that’s emotional manipulation or simply empathy is a conversation I don’t have time to have with myself today, but overall, it works within this episode. Before the mystery is fully revealed, our two time travelers end up having multiple run-ins with a young woman who claims to know about various conspiracies involving aliens trying to keep humans on Earth and at war with each other and when she shows them some proof she has an image of a Romulan ship. Could they be the ones behind the change in the timeline? Well, yes. And that young woman is one of them in human form and not only was she sent back in time to ruin humanity, she’s been stuck for 30ish years because time keeps pushing back. So while she believes she can fulfill her mission, it has taken far longer to do so. It’s a lot. It’s almost too much for this episode that feels like a callback to other classis TOS episodes. And with that her mission brings us to…
Continued below4. The Khan Job
La’an and Kirk stumbling upon the Noonien-Singh Institute is where this show may have gone too far with all of the continuous callbacks and references to Khan and the Eugenics Wars. And while those things have been intrinsically linked into the DNA of this show, both with La’an being a descendent of Khan and Una’s Illyrian modifications, it has been starting to feel like a bit too much fan service. We get it, Khan is the greatest Trek villain there is, but we really need to calm down with how many times he and his people are mentioned or a physically brought into the franchise. Now, this Romulan spy’s job was to kill Khan as a small boy so that his reign of terror never comes to pass. Sounds good right? Well, no. If he doesn’t wage the Eugenics wars, then the people of Earth don’t unite against him, and if that doesn’t happen other issues arise and we get the pretty crappy future that this Kirk is from. Thankfully this seems like it could be the episode that closes the circle on the whole Khan problem. La’an saves him, sees that he is just a normal child, but he will be molded into a tyrannical warrior and she needs to let it happen. It’s another bleak chapter in her book, but allowing her to see this generational boogeyman that she happens to be related to as just a normal kid is a bit of closure that she desperately needed.
5. Two Many Kirks
Alt Kirk dies trying to stop the Romulan, but not before he and La’an shared some romantic feelings during their adventure. This leads her to call Kirk Prime at the end of the episode, someone she has never met, just to check in on him. She uses the excuse that she is trying to update Sam Kirk’s file and figured calling his brother on another ship would be the quickest way to the answer? Anyway, it’s a really heartbreaking moment and Christina Chong’s performance, as always, is on point. Her heavy crying after disconnecting the call feels so real and hopeless, and the episode makes us sit with it as we fade to credits. She fell in love with a man who no longer exists while knowing a near duplicate is out there who has zero connection to her. Devastating.
